missioncreek_092_mac.jpg The organizing team, l to r- Jon Fellman,Andre Perry, Megan Hickey and founder Jeff Ray, (partially seen in back is Neil Martinson) work on a timeline of bands and venues for the festival. Mission Creek Music Festival, a local rock festival has been going for almost ten years. The organizers meet every Tuesday at the home of the festival founder, Jeff Ray to plan out strategy for this year's upcoming event. 5/17/05 San Francisco, Ca Michael Macor / San Francisco Chronicle Mandatory Credit for Photographer and San Francisco Chronicle/ - Magazine Out

Sitting around a long table in the noisy backyard beer garden at the Zeitgeist, a hipster biker bar in the Mission District, the six organizers of the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival, a local independent celebration of everything indie in the Bay Area, are in absolute agreement that they will not accept corporate sponsorship.

"No way," says founder Jeff Ray, 38, dressed in a Western-style shirt and dark pants in the unconsciously hip style of a musician as the group enjoys a warm Mission evening. "That is absolutely not what Mission Creek is about."

"You know, like Pepsi or ..." Hickey, an elfin producer who has worked on the festival for three years, looks around. After a moment, Jon Fellman, who has been with Ray since the first year's daylong event, chimes in with a few more examples of corporate entities.

"Kinko's, Bank of America ... It's like pornography, you'll know it when you see it," Fellman says. "But it's not exactly like they're knocking down our doors."

Ray murmurs that he'd consider breaking the rule if, say, Icelandair was willing to chip in to fly out some Icelandic bands.

"Basically, we're not interested in companies without any responsibility or connection to the local community," says Andre Perry, the festival's newest producer (and member of the Lonely Hearts band).

That phrase -- "connection to the local community" -- nicely sums up the mission behind Mission Creek. This year's lineup features 150 bands playing small-to-medium venues in seven days, with only a handful of acts from out of the Bay Area.

Mission Creek prides itself on showcasing fledgling musicians and artists who go on to headline their own shows. Fellman was the first person in San Francisco to book hipster harpist Joanna Newsom; former Mission Creek acts include Devendra Banhart, Erase Errataand Rogue Wave, all of whom developed national followings. The local artists who design the posters also tend to be luminaries; Jo Jackson, a key artist in the "Mission School" phenomenon, was an early contributor.

"If you're in a band in San Francisco, it only makes sense you'll play Mission Creek," says festival first-timer Liza Thorn, of the brilliantly named band So So Many White White Tigers. Thorn's band, although less than a year old, has been getting scads of press in the local weeklies. "Things seem to get talked about more when they're part of a festival, places get packed as opposed to the same, you know, 20 people. We're totally happy to play."

Local music writer Josh Wilson drops in on the discussion, his voice rising. "I don't want it to end up like Noise Pop, lose all the freshness. It's so important in the Bay Area to have an event feature the underrepresented local music scene." (The Mission Creek producers have nothing but praise for Noise Pop, "the other festival," which started from similarly humble roots but grew in a different direction.)

The commitment to keeping the festival stocked with local, often unknown bands and scantily funded by small sponsors and sporadic grants both defines and limits the music programming. It also seems completely appropriate for the Bay Area, where the music scene is often criticized for a certain insular attitude. That's the "friend rock" phenomenon: people playing music for their friends without much thought toward attracting bigger audiences.

Ray acknowledges this as a shortcoming of both the festival and the scene itself. "Look, I get bummed out about that. People are extremely reluctant to leave their social comfort zone and hear new music. As a complete music nerd myself, it's frustrating that shows are as much a dating scene as a place to hear a band."

"Jon Fellman and I have been really strict with Jeff about booking bands we're friends with," Hickey says. "It's hard, in a small scene, to avoid working with friends, but I'm much more interested in booking bands I've never met, just listened to."

The downside of having a low profile, even after nine years, is that once a band gets big enough to headline a large venue in town, it is too big for Mission Creek.

"Many bands we booked one year want to come back another year, but their booking agents won't let them," Ray says, sipping tea at Atlas Cafe on a recent afternoon. "That's the toughest thing -- trying to convince booking agents that Mission Creek is worth playing."

When Ray began the festival, though, none of these concerns were even a glimmer in his eye. As a local musician with a popular local band, Zmzrlina, Ray threw together a lineup of his friend's bands at the El Rio bar and called it the Mission Creek Music Festival. By the second year, the event stretched to a weekend, and by the third year, Ray began getting help with the planning.

The festival grew every year, peaking last year at a rather unwieldy 10- day extravaganza. This year, Ray says, he is especially excited by the art and video contributions, which will be showcased at the Lab, a Mission art space.

"As someone in a rather unknown band, it was awesome being on a bill with other bands. I remember playing Cafe Du Nord at, like, 8 p.m.," Perry says, laughing. "And even at that hour, because it was Mission Creek, it was packed. It was so great to play to a full house at Cafe Du Nord when you would have never gotten that gig on your own."

The thrill of hearing new music, music from bands who may never have played a show before, excites the producers more than booking well-known acts. They pride themselves on listening to every submission they get.

"You know that thrill of hearing a band for the first time in a small club, when you freak out about something that's new and you remember where you were when you heard a record for the first time? That's what I feel like sometimes when I'm doing Mission Creek stuff, particularly with this band, Strength, who I heard at a house party last year, and they were amazing," says Hickey, who has been booking shows since she was a teenager.

"I was like, they have to play Mission Creek! And they had never really played a show before. But the demo they sent us blew everyone away. They're coming back this year, and I'm really excited."

Ray is committed to staying on through the 10th anniversary next year. "I want to make it huge," he says, a smile spreading across his face. "Reunite some of the former Mission Creek people, get more people in from out of town. Ten years is a big anniversary. I wouldn't mind seeing someone like, say, Bright Eyes playing for the festival."

Bright Eyes, Ray notes, has also taken a stand against corporate music behemoth Clear Channel. "Yeah, I think he'd make a perfect fit," Ray says.

Mission Creek Music Festival takes place next Sunday through June 12 at venues around San Francisco. Check Web site www.mcmf.org for schedule.